Annotated Bibliography for Learning Communities: Creating Environments that Retain, Engage and Transform Learners
Webinar Presented at Innovative Educators by Faculty: Carol Hamilton & Jane Lister Reis—
Teaching Assistants: Cam Basden, Haley Gronbeck & Chris McCrae from North Seattle Community College on March 30, 2011
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004. Print
We used Ken Bain’s book in a twice monthly, year long series of faculty development workshops that challenged each of us to examine our practices, pedagogy, and change how we teach. This small book is packed with practical and thought provoking work on the questions teachers can ask themselves in order to constantly improve their practice based on research and study about what the best teachers know and do as college teachers.
Barkley, Elizabeth F. & Patricia K Cross & Claire Howell Major. Collaborative learning techniques: a handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004. Print
Engaging students in active learning is a predominant theme in today's classrooms. To promote active learning, teachers across the disciplines and in all kinds of colleges are incorporating collaborative learning into their teaching. Collaborative Learning Techniques is a scholarly and well-written handbook that guides teachers through all aspects of group work, providing solid information on what to do, how to do it, and why it is important to student learning.
Belenky, Mary Field & Lynne Bond & Jaccqueline S. Weinstock. A Tradition That Has No Name: Nurturing the Development of People, Families, and Communities. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Print
This book gave us the concept of “public homespaces” from psychology, women’s studies, and community formation to help build our understanding of the classroom as a community. This important research on how people, families, and communities are nurtured has informed our practice as teachers and helped our students to understand about dialogue, community building, and nurture as deeply human practices that women have promoted and authored for centuries.
Conner, M. L. "How Adults Learn." Ageless Learner. 1997-2007. Web. http://agelesslearner.com/intros/adultlearning.html
This site is a comprehensive overview of Adult Learning theories and resource material that outlines what we know about how adults learn and thrive as learners. These ideas have helped us to develop our approaches and to articulate what we were doing that worked with students and was consistent with these theories.
Finkel, Donald L. Teaching With Your Mouth Shut. New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook, 2000. Print
Finkel was one of the inspired and inspiring faculty at Evergreen State College in its first decades who understood that “true” learning had to come from the student’s themselves. He advocates an approach that keeps teaching/preaching/lecturing to a minimum and brings the student’s voices and minds fully into the learning arena—on their terms—not only a curricular agenda. Finkel was one of the first college teachers to write about student-centered, democratic education using seminars and surprise!
Hamilton, Carol and Jane Lister Reis. “Nurturing the “Whole Person”: The Learning Community Experience as a Safe Space.” Diversity, Educational Equity, & Learning Communities. Olympia, Washington: Washington Center, 2005.
Our article on how to create a learning community that is a safe space for learning and discovering the power and possibility in using one’s voice as a writer, speaker, and communicator encourages students to be fully engaged and empowered to learn. This article was written and published after we taught a course in 2003 that was similar to the Beginnings course that we taught in 2010, yet we have also learned more and developed further pedagogies as we have worked with student’s to learn what works best for their development as whole people.
Isaacs, William. Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together. New York: Currency Books, 1999. Print.
A powerful exploration of how “dialogue” can help us form communities of practice, learning, and action that can change the paradigms of each participant to be more human, listen to each other, and work towards collaborations that will help everyone. The book introduces the “four-player model system of “movers, opposers, followers, bystanders” that can help us to move to healthier “ecology” of thought in our families, workplaces, communities, and world.
Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference-Second Edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006.
We have used this book in our courses to bring the important work of discussing white privilege and awareness of the system of power embedded in our society. Allan Johnson has visited and spoken at our college and when he revised his book in 2006, he included the difference of abled and nondisabled after working with our students in the integrated studies classes because they taught him about this important difference.
K. Patricia Cross. Accent on Learning: Improving Instruction and Reshaping the Curriculum. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977. Print
This important book was at the forefront of understanding that communities colleges, and all of higher education, had to focus on “student learning” and move to ways of instruction that demand an attention to personal development, people skills, interpersonal skills and the thinking about adults as life-long learners. The ideas in this book may address some old problems, but the methods and pedagogy that Cross introduces underpin the operating principles in most excellent curriculum delivery for the past three decades. Integrated studies and learning communities are an example of the curriculum reform that she addressed in this early book.
L. Dee Fink. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003. Print.
This book was the text in 2009 & 2010 for our faculty development sessions—led by Jane Lister Reis— at our college. We learned the wisdom of making the “activities” and expectations of our courses match our student’s needs for having a “significant learning experience”—ones that will stay with them, build an ability to work together on real world problems or issues, and change the “way” we design and deliver college courses to all of the students in our classrooms.
Nieto, Leticia and Boyer, Margot et al. Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone. Olympia, Washington: Cuetzpalin Publishers, 2010. Print
This unique and beautiful book is the result of long collaboration of a Leticia Nieto and four authors, including our colleague, Margot Boyer. They have put together a beautiful book of stories, ideas to inspire and helpful discussion about how we can all learn to include others and in the process of deep understanding become empowered to change the ranking systems that hold the old ways of operating together and keep us all less free. This model has helped our students to “see” the hidden power of separation, segregation, and exclusion that exist in our country and in many other systems around us.
Palmer, Parker J. The Courage to Teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998. Print
In this powerful book, now in a 10th year edition, Parker Palmer, who has been a mentor/presenter in our development as teachers, teaches us how we can learn to listen to ourselves and find an image or metaphor for “who” we are in the classroom. This essential step of doing our own inner work is promoted by Palmer’s deep love of the craft of teaching as an art of listening to our own hearts first and next to that of the students in our classrooms.
Smith, Barbara Leigh and Jean MacGregor, Roberta S. Matthews and Faith Gabelnick. Learning Communities: Reforming Undergraduate Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004. Print
The two founders of Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education—Smith and McGregor— with two other practitioners offer here the history, theory and models of the Learning Communities model. These are the leaders of the movement who have impacted our work in Washington State and particularly at our college. This book is foundational to understanding and developing solid and sustainable programs on your campus.
Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education. Olympia, Washington: Evergreen State College. http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/about1.asp Web
This site is rich with resources that our college—North Seattle Community College—has participated in and benefitted from for the over 20 years it has existed. Since it is only an hour and half drive away, faculty at North have had faculty exchanges with Evergreen, attended many formation workshops and conferences, been part of national projects and held conferences and workshops on our campus in conjunction with the work of this outstanding organization. Carol Hamilton has participated for over 15 years; Jane Lister Reis was a campus liaison to the center for over six years when they were the campus leaders for North in the National Project in 2006-2008 called Assessing Learning in Learning Communities. An executive summary of work—by Kathe Taylor et al-- done on assessment of Learning Communities at the twenty-year mark of the existence of Washington Center can be found at Learning Community Research and Assessment: What We Know Now, Executive Summary